October 2011

02/01/2012

I already knew A.S. King was a really, really good writer. Please Ignore Vera Dietz was the best young adult book that I read in 2011, and I'm so glad that I started 2012 with Everybody Sees the Ants.

What I began to understand about A.S. King while sitting in the audience of her Printz speech in New Orleans, and what was cemented as I read Vera Dietz, is that there is a frankness about her. That she is "frank" might not sound like a compliment, but I mean it as a big one. She speaks frankly and she writes frankly, and she is not afraid to talk about pain or to write about it.

(Part of the reason I loved Everybody Sees the Ants immediately is because it recalled for me Tiger Eyes, my favorite Judy Blume book and one of my all-time favorite books and a book I probably read at least a hundred times as a young girl. In that book, as you probably know, a teenage girl and her family move to New Mexico to stay with an aunt and uncle after a trauma, and it's a whole new world where the girl is both able to escape her life and find herself again, in a way, and it's perfect. In Ants, a mother brings her son to Arizona after a trauma to stay with an aunt and uncle, and I could write a whole essay here comparing and contrasting these two books, but I won't. I just wanted to point out that I liked that they had this in common.)

This is the story of a boy named Lucky who is treated quite badly by his fellow boys. After one particularly heinous incident at the neighborhood pool, his mom up and relocates them to Arizona to stay with her brother and his wife. Lucky's mom is addicted to swimming, his dad is addicted to the Food Network, and his aunt is addicted to pills, and Lucky escapes it all every night in his dreams. He escapes in his dreams to the jungles of Vietnam, where he spends time with his grandfather, who has been missing in action since the war and whose absence has left a big hole in their lives.

It would seem that this is all in Lucky's mind, right? Or is it? Somehow it doesn't matter, because this is A.S. King, and we go along with it, and we believe. These dreams are presented as rescue missions where Lucky tries to save his grandfather and bring him home. In this jungle are frogs and booby traps and leeches and ants. The lines start to blur for Lucky between being asleep and awake, and whether he's awake or he's dreaming, he sees the ants.

When his uncle stands up for him when his mom and aunt give him a hard time, Lucky looks at his uncle and notes, "The ants form a rotating halo above his head. They sing that high-pitched note that angels sing."

In an A.S. King book, it just makes sense that Lucky sees the ants. She is able to spin these stories with this sort of unique, well, frankness, and this matter-of-factness, even about things which are quite extraordinary and seemingly impossible, in such a way where the reader believes them to be totally possible. We just accept the story she tells because we love the characters she creates and we believe that the rights and the wrongs that they face are real.

There is so much more to this story than I can touch on here. This book made me feel brave. It is not a book about magic, but it made me believe in magic anyway. You will just have to read it yourself to see what I mean.

11/10/2011

First, a bit of business: Kidliterate now has a Facebook page, and I am giving away books every time we get a hundred new followers. When we got to 100, I gave away a complete set of Emily Jenkins' TOYS series in hardcover! So go here to like us on Facebook. Don't worry - we don't post often, so we won't be clogging up your feed!

So even though I still want more Creel (MORE!), I can't possibly stay mad at someone who writes these books I love so much. Because, my friends, she went and did it again - and not in a Britney type of way. This time, she's gone and created Princess Celie, and darned if I'm not head over heels again.

Celie lives in Castle Glower, where Tuesdays are amazing. Why, you ask? Because on Tuesdays, the castle gets bored and changes itself. It might rearrange some corridors, or add a new room or two, or stick an entire wing on one end, or pop on some new towers. That door you take to get where you go? Might not be there on Tuesday. It was certainly frustrating to some visitors, but "Celie truly loved Castle Glower. She never minded being late for lessons because the corridor outside her room had become twice as long, and she certainly didn't mind the new room in the south wing that had a bouncy floor. Even if you could only get to it by climbing through the fireplace of the Winter Dining Hall." And Celie felt like the Castle loved her, too. Whenever she urgently needed to be somewhere, she could usually get there quickly. When she was sick, the Castle filled her room with flowers. It left her snacks when she was hungry and led her to fun places when she needed something to do.

Not only does the Castle change itself when bored, it also changes itself to alter circumstances or to help a situation along. The current King, Celie's father, was chosen by the Castle. If the Castle furnished a visitor's room poorly, the guards knew to keep a close eye on them. It seemed like the Castle truly knew everyone and exactly what was going on, all the time.

So when Celie's parents and older brother disappear and she and her sister and younger brother are left alone with a Council that doesn't seem all that broken up about the vanished royals, it is to the Castle that the prince and princesses turn for help. But when the situation turns ever more dangerous and even the Castle seems unable to help, will Celie be able to save her family?

This is a GREAT read-aloud. It's also perfect for kids who love Gail Carson Levine or Jean Ferris or E.D. Baker. This is younger than Ms. George's other books, though fans of DRAGON SLIPPERS will find much to love here. I love feisty, whipsmart Celie and the motley band of allies she assembles under the watchful eyes of the Council scoundrels. I love how she learns and grows during the book but the learning and growing is all wrapped in rollicking adventure and secret passageways and spying and the most awesome Castle in kids' books. I love her relationship with her siblings, especially Rolf, the king's heir. I love how when you read this book, you can go from heart-pounding excitement to loud laughter on the same page.

AND it's the first book of three, so we've got two to go, and then you can all be mad with me at the end. At least until Jessica Day George pulls another awesome heroine out of her seemingly endless bag of tricks. **Correction - Ms. George tells me that she doesn't know how many books there will be about Castle Glower, and that it's not intended to be a trilogy. Sad face. Well, I love this one, and will be hopeful of more!**